


Coffee Coffin

by parkguardian



Category: South Park
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 17:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1696715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parkguardian/pseuds/parkguardian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By now, Craig is well accustomed to Tweek’s high-strung tendencies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffee Coffin

**Author's Note:**

> creek relationship study! not much more, not much else

There's a milky white light that flickers over the peeling walls. It's a quick flash and then it's gone, leaving swirling purple phosphenes in the corner of his vision. He's trembling, a mixture of cold air and anxiety in one. His fingers are tangled and tugging at his well thinned hair.

"Are you sure no one's going to find these?"

The camera whirs and clicks. Another bright flare paints his features pale. There are rows of potted plants crowding the room, their green leaves overflowing and healthy. The whole room smells of coffee creamer and morning glory.

"No one's going to find them," he says.

"How can you tell?"

"I keep all my pictures of you in a secret place."

Craig sets the camera down on the dark sheets, right beside Tweek's knee. He takes Tweek's hand and guides it out from his frazzled hair. Tweek's fingers feel thin, the bones jutting under taut skin. He feels scaly. He has rings set atop each knuckle. They're the type that spin noisily, made especially for people who fidget.

"Where do you keep them?" Tweek asks.

"Well, I can't tell you, can I? Then someone would know where they are. The secret would be compromised," Craig replies.

Tweek's entire body quivers. "That's a good point," he chokes out.

Craig has been in Tweek's room enough to have memorized it fully.

There is a tiny hole cut out of the wall, to the left of the bed, and it is stuffed full of argyle socks. Craig has asked enough times about the hole--Tweek tells him it's actually the entrance to an intricate tunnel system--to know that he shouldn't bother asking about it any longer. He figured it would be a McCormick household situation, another borderline rat infestation. Tweek swears on his life it's full of gnomes that steal his underwear, to which Craig said was no excuse for Tweek running around commando all the time.

There are also posters of Norwegian film festivals and a few watercolour canvases tacked to the walls. These are supposed to hide the eyeballs that open up on the walls and look at Tweek when he tries to sleep. Craig has ultimately decided to stop asking about these as well. Instead, he bought him a large print of a dragon in shades of yellows and greens.

There are three locks on his windows and two on his door. Before he lays in his bed, he swallows a handful of sleeping pills and washes them down with a cup of decaf, pushes his dresser in front of his door, and closes the curtains. Craig has stopped asking why. When Tweek asks him to stay over, although rare, he is now the one who draws the blinds.

Tweek has a row of cassette tapes in a box under his desk. They all have weird names scrawled onto the front. Tweek's favourite is "alien whispers" and it is a compilation of distorted MGMT remixes and Röyksopp songs slowed down until they are unintelligible. He plays them when he is alone, because they distract him from the thoughts that loop in his own head.

"Why do you want so many pictures of me?"

Tweek's hands have gone from his hair to idly clacking together. His array of spinning rings hit one another, the noise matching the chattering of his teeth. Craig pulls Tweek's hands apart again, making sure they worm under Tweek's thighs so he is sitting on them. Craig moves to undo the button's on Tweek's shirt.

He slips one button out. The button is cold and pearly under his fingertip.

"Because," he says.

"Why?" Tweek asks again.

He goes down the line of buttons, all the way down Tweek's chest and to his stomach. Tweek shivers, and Craig knows it's different from the usual twitching that Tweek does involuntarily. He can feel it in the way Tweek's breathing goes from nervously shallow to a soft sigh.

"You're the most interesting person I've ever met," Craig states. His voice is nonchalant, but Tweek brightens all the same.

"You're not just saying that?"

Craig starts back up the buttons, fixing the alignment. When Tweek tries to do it himself, he always skips buttons because his hands are shaking too badly. Craig has put on all of Tweek's spinning rings before and tried to button Tweek's shirt. The experiment had proven that wearing so many rings made his fingers feel clumsy and thick, drawing out the simple task longer than usual.

He smooths the flat of his palm down the front of Tweek's shirt. His hand stops over Tweek's heart. It's beating quickly, alarmingly fast. It feels like when Craig nudges his guinea pig's chest and can feel the throb of a pulse in his fingertip, racing like a car down the track.

"There," he says.

"What? Is there something wrong with my heart? Do you think I have a condition?"

Craig snorts. "No, it's fine."

Tweek is tentative, but he closes his hand on top of Craig's. He feels like ice, and his rings are colder.

"I like your heart. It beats faster than other people's, which is good, because I hate other people."

"I hate other people. They make me want to throw up when they try to touch me, or if they breathe on me too much. I can't stand it," Tweek rambles. He squeaks. "I hate it, I hate being around other people."

"I don't hate you," Craig says.

Tweek blinks. He squeezes Craig's hand tightly. "I don't hate you either."

From Tweek's window, the jagged points of mountains are just above the stiff trees. The sun is a dusty gold. The powdered snow is twinkling in the distance, like a band of stars, or the flash from a camera. Craig bites at the inside of his cheek. He doesn't think Tweek will notice, but he does.

"You're going to chew through your mouth."

"No, I won't."

"You'll look like a zombie with a big hole in your face."

"No, I won't," he repeats.

"Yeah, you will, if you keep biting like that. Then you'll be too scary for me to look at. I like to look at you, so you should not do that." Tweek's words are tumbling fast, like his heart rate is jumping out of his mouth, keeping his sentences on tempo.

"Can I kiss you?"

Tweek's eyes bug out of his head. He grips onto Craig's hand so hard, his knuckles turn white.

They've almost kissed countless times, when they lay next to each other in Craig's bed with their noses touching, studying each other's faces and blocking out the sound of Craig's family yelling at one another downstairs. They've almost kissed when Craig's fingers traced down Tweek's side and found that circle of skin by his hip that makes him gasp any time he grazes it. They've almost kissed after drinking frappuccinos and Craig swiped his thumb over Tweek's mouth to clean off a dab of whipped cream.

But they haven't, and it drives Craig dizzy with frustration. It's too much pressure for Tweek to handle, the idea of being wanted. It's a fuckton of performance anxiety swimming through Tweek's head.

"What if I'm not any good?"

"Then we keep trying until you feel better about it."

Tweek squeezes his eyes shut. His face is pink. His hold on Craig's hand is getting to be uncomfortable, but Craig doesn't say a word.

"Okay. Do it."

Craig leans forward, barely brushing his lips onto Tweek's own. Craig is warm. Tweek meets him the rest of the way, pushing up into the feeling of it. He's shaking, clumsily moving his mouth on Craig's.

When they pull away, Tweek can't stop smiling. He touches his fingers to his mouth, and then decides to run his rings across his lips as well. Craig pushes a strand of hair from Tweek's eyes.

"Hey."

"Yeah?" Tweek stammers.

"You were good."

"Really?"

Craig nods. He threads their fingers back together and uses his free hand to move along Tweek's scalp, lightly scratching with his cleanly cut nails. Tweek is sitting as still as he can, messing with the hem to his shirt and basking in the attention paid to him.

Later, Tweek shows Craig how to make patterns in the froth of a latte. They have the house to themselves for the afternoon, and they dance together over the kitchen tiles in their socks, sliding into one another. Craig is crowned the champion of the chicken dance, and they watch reruns of cartoons on Tweek's tiny television until the sun disappears from the sky.

That night, they make a fort out of blankets so Tweek can't see the eyes opening up around the room. They play the "whale water" cassette tape and push the dresser in front of the door. This time, when they lay side by side and fit together like pieces of a puzzle, Tweek kisses Craig on the mouth because he doesn't have to ask.


End file.
